


Petrichor

by ovijiaboardz



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, Bitterness, Emotional Baggage, Emotionally Repressed, Gen, Introspection, Killing, Minor Character Death, New Dangan Ronpa V3 Spoilers, Pre-New Dangan Ronpa V3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 15:31:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17625011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ovijiaboardz/pseuds/ovijiaboardz
Summary: She knew that no matter how much life, how many people were breathing around her, death would always be there. Perhaps that’s why when she held the small girl’s hand, the wind in her loose, raven ponytails - her face was empty





	Petrichor

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday Maki! Sorry I can’t write happy things

Death was death. That’s all there was to it, nothing more, nothing less. It wasn’t beautiful, it wasn’t uglym; holding no aesthetic or moral values but mere  _end._

Maki has always believed this. She knew that no matter how much life, how many people were breathing around her, death would always be there. Perhaps that’s why when she held the small girl’s hand, the wind in her loose, raven ponytails - her face was empty.

 She was usually able to easily relax the children, whether it was singing them back to sleep after a nightmare or putting ice on a bruise. However, after the death of a veteran at the orphanage, she had no idea what to say to comfort the others. The children grieved her loss like anyone would, moving through the stages as a person normally should.

But Maki peered into the casket at the lifeless corpse and felt nothing.

 The child's hand was cold and clammy, moldable in her own.  

The child beside her stared up at her with big eyes and she felt their hand slipping from hers. Once again, Harukawa was wordless. She reached into a bag, and pulled out the flowers that they had insisted on leaving. She didn’t see a point - once someone’s dead, the sentiment of flowers didn’t mean a thing, and tearing them out of the ground only ended another life, _oh the irony._ The roses were wilted and brown at the corners, and she set them down. The ground was cold and damp, and the petrichor filled her senses.

A chilly breeze blew past, and Maki shivered, tucking her hands deeper inside her sweater sleeve.

The older one who’d drove them here, Marjorie was her name, sat down on her knees. She kneeled down and ran her hand along the stone. The young girl turned and examined the hundreds, if not thousands of tombs around them.

 “There’s so many,” she mumbled. “I hope they’re all in a peaceful place now, oh they must have had wonderful lives…” She peered around at the rows after rows after rows of graves and flowers a. “It’s so pretty, huh?”

It makes her want to scream, scream that the dead with their broken bones and used up lives weren't something to gawk at, to point and remark on as if you knew them, could ever know them. They are dead, and that's all they'll ever be, anymore.

Instead, she stares at the ground. It’s getting colder, and she wished that she’d brought a jacket. She feels a wet pelt, then another, then another. She silently pleads thanks to a god she didn’t believe in and headed back to the car, almost forcefully tugging the girl along with her.

She finally turned to face the girl. “No, it’s not pretty. There’s nothing pretty about it.”

The small girl, only about seven years old, lowered her head. She didn’t speak out again. Maki sighed, knowing that she was just a kid who could never understand the equal weight and worthlessness of human life.

In the distance, just outside the foggy car window, Maki saw a white-cloaked priest without a coat on praying over a grave. She scoffed.

She noticed the young girl shivering, so she wraps her jacket around her. 

“You’ll catch cold,” she murmured. She puts her free hand in her sweater pocket and feels a damp check. She grimaces and doesn’t say another word the entire car ride.


End file.
